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#1 |
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Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Mt Disappointment
Posts: 33,466
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Overfishing
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science...ish/index.html
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__________________
Continually pushing the boundaries of mediocrity. Everything is possible, but not everything is probable. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it. Hobbes |
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#2 |
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Persnickety Insect
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Sunny Munuvia
Posts: 14,943
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Fishing is the only major source of food that is not managed from beginning to end. Expect this to change; if we want to keep eating fish we'll have to farm them.
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Free blogs for skeptics... And everyone else. mee.nu What, in the Holy Name of Gzortch, are you people doing?!?!!? - TGHO |
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#3 |
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Scholar
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 116
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Re: Overfishing
Quote:
While ecological studies have shown that most fishes can be sustainably harvested at or near 40% for optimum growth, fisheries can't accept that they have to fish less to catch more. It's a semi-law that any shared resource will be overexploited by its very nature. The same can be seen with trees, in that other than protected areas, there isn't a single tree standing in the US that wasn't harvested at some point. You can look back at the late 1800's photographs of the monster trees that existed then. H. |
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Sum Ergo Cogito. |
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#4 |
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Guest
Posts: n/a
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Since no one owns any land under the ocean it's the last place where the tragedy of the commons can happen on a large scale. I guess international law would have to be changed to allow companies, organizations and governments to buy ocean real estate so it can be better managed. Fishing companies could buy large plots of land (ocean) and manage it so there will still be fish for years to come. Governments and environmental orgs could buy plots and ban fishing there, of course, who would they buy it from since no one owns it yet. I'm sure the fishing companies don't want to fish themselves out of business.
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#5 |
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Shakespeare's Sock Puppet
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Live Free Or Die
Posts: 16,325
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It was just on local news. In an atlantic-coast state, the response is predictable: "local fishermen dispute the study..."
I agree with Grape--it's a big tragedy of the commons. |
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"But to see her was to love her Love but her, and love forever." |
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#6 |
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Graduate Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 1,097
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Quote:
See http://www.cknw.com/FishFile/ for a detailed look at Fish Farming in BC. It seems that the methds used are the issue and that commercial farming is viable when the environmental factors are carefully watched. An example is in-land fish farming, but the cost is prohibitive. |
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Skeptics CAN be compassionate and understanding. But more often than not some of them feel that they MUST win the argument no matter what the cost. I say that the cost of that is our ability to get our message through. G6 |
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#7 |
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Seasonally Disaffected
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Chilly Undieville
Posts: 5,670
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My understanding is that some farmed salmon are fed corn based salmon chow, and the meat has to be dyed to look like wild salmon. Yum Yum. |
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When you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer . . . " - Stevie Wonder "Stupidity - a callow indifference to facts or data" - Stuart Firestein -neuroscientist. I hate bigots. |
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#8 |
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Seasonally Disaffected
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Chilly Undieville
Posts: 5,670
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A problem that could be fixed relatively easily is the fishing permit process. In Alaska, a commercial fisherman can have a permit for salmon or halibut or cod for example. The fisherman with the cod permit has to throw overboard any fish caught that is not allowed on his permit. Those fish are called " by catch ". The great majority of the by catch fish are dead or die shortly after going back overboard. A statistic that was tossed around quite a bit last year is that the tonnage of by catch halibut each year is more than the total for sport caught halibut.
This permit process wastes a huge amount of fish, and the permit process is mostly intended to protect the turfs of the various commercial fishing groups. If the cod fisherman could legally sell his by catch, he could take fewer fish from the ocean, and deplete the resource less - or he could catch the current number of fish, waste less, and make more money. |
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When you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer . . . " - Stevie Wonder "Stupidity - a callow indifference to facts or data" - Stuart Firestein -neuroscientist. I hate bigots. |
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#9 |
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Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Central Illinois
Posts: 34,925
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Industrial fishing had led to the decline of fish the same way that the pioneers killed the buffalo.
I don't think that farming is a solution yet, the profit in fishing is that basicaly you just go and pick them up , it is a natural resource, cultivation rquires an investment strategy. The other problem is the 'getting everyone to do it", right now there are countries that have a large economic incentive to keep fishing, they don't care, they want money. They fish illegally wherever they want , and as of yet no one is sinking thier vessels. The easiest solution would be to set minimum mesh sizes on nets, this way you could garuntee that a certain percentage of immature fish would survive.( I know mature anchovies are very small.) Peace |
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Hell, dynamiting fish in a barrel is more challenging. - Ladewig I suspect you are a sandwich, metaphorically speaking. -Donn And a shot rang out. Now Space is doing time... -Ben Burch You built the toilet - don't complain when people crap in it. _Kid Eager |
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#10 |
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Muse
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 756
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Quote:
Small fishermen (fisherpeople?) could form a cooperative to own some seabed as a partnership and other areas could be left in the public domain, off limits for commercial fishing but open for the public and sport fishing. This works in every other application, it could work for fishing, too. Time to get it done. |
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- Gary |
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#11 |
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Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 9,270
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Rimmer: Look at her! Magnificent woman! Very prim, very proper, almost austere. Some people took her for cold, thought she was aloof. Not a bit of it. She just despised fools. Quite tragic, really, because otherwise I think we'd have got on famously. |
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#12 |
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Philosopher
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: orange country, california
Posts: 7,333
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Discover ran this article back in September of 2001.
http://www.discover.com/search/index.html The point of the article was that a small fish, the menhaden, was being dangerously over exploited without consideration for its effect on the populations of larger fish. The notion of mining the ocean for vast quantities of small fish to be used for fertilizer strikes me as one of the most wasteful (ecologically) practices that we humans engage in. The primary beneficiary of the results of this exploitation is a single company. The costs to various third parties of this exploitation could be huge. Some of the impacted third parties might include commerical fisherman, sports fisherman, the sports fishing industry and sea food consumers. Can't these groups develop sufficient political power to prevent this kind of thing? |
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#13 |
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Guest
Posts: n/a
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#14 |
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Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Mt Disappointment
Posts: 33,466
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Quote:
Enforcement is one of the major problems. A few fishing boats can be hard to spot on a large ocean, and they can be fishing for orange roughy, which has only recently been exploited and is already on the verge of extinction. Also, poor countries sign over leases for a pittance, because they are not in a strong negotiating position, or are getting getting a bribe. I was watching a TV show on this. If the French catch you fishing illegally, they just take the crew off the ship and sink it. No questions asked. There are illegal fishing companies that get an old rustbucket, crew a ship with cheap labour from the phillipines or similar country, deck out the bridge with the latest fishing gear while leaving the crew to live in a stink hole, and send it off. The ship will have paid for itself after only one or two trips, so the owner doesn't care if it is caught fishing illegally and impounded after a few trips. The fact is, there is a fortune to be made in illegal fishing. |
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__________________
Continually pushing the boundaries of mediocrity. Everything is possible, but not everything is probable. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it. Hobbes |
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#15 |
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Muse
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 756
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Quote:
There will never be a foolproof solution, I'm sure. But if companies had to limit the areas they could use (and enforcement would be critical, maybe including the executives of the companies) they'd be more likely to conserve their resources. Of course, I agree that someone ONLY in it for a quick buck, that could care less about retaining either a long term source of income or preserving the value of their seabed, could just catch every fish in it and go out of business. I guess we could only hope that the rights to the seabeds were so expensive that that behavior would be self limiting. |
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- Gary |
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#16 |
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Illuminator
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 4,994
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Re: Re: Overfishing
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__________________
Radicals and Racists Don't point your finger at me I'm a small town white boy Just tryin' to make ends meet Don't need your religion Don't watch that much T.V. Just makin' my livin', baby Well that's enough for me |
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